Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Spook Banks

It feels good, albeit in that familiar and bitter I could have told you so kind of way, to see the mainstream media hesitantly lift the rock and shed some light on the wormy business of CIA money laundering.

The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have begun to do just that, finally, with Riggs Bank, and Slate has followed their lead this week with a couple of articles.

On the last day of 2004, [Glenn R.] Simpson published a [Wall Street] Journal story about the Justice Department's investigation of purported money-laundering at Riggs Bank, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C. Previous news reports had connected Riggs to the dubious financial machinations of Saudi diplomats and despots from Africa and South America, including Chile's former maximum leader, Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Banking regulators fined Riggs $25 million last year for its violations, the institution put itself up for sale, and a Justice Department investigation was started.

Simpson's Dec. 31 piece—inexplicably appearing on Page A-4 instead of A-1—locates what may be the common denominator shared by Riggs, the Saudis, the Africans, and the South Americans: the Central Intelligence Agency.

Citing unnamed U.S. government officials and people familiar with Riggs operations, Simpson reports that the bank has enjoyed a "relationship" with the CIA for some time. "That relationship, which included top current and former Riggs executives receiving U.S. government security clearances, could complicate any prosecution of the bank's officials, according to private lawyers and former prosecutors," he writes. By "complicate" one can safely assume that Simpson means "make impossible."

...

Bandar briefed Treasury Secretary John Snow in early 2003 about the work he'd done for the CIA, Simpson notes. The parapolitical credits on the prince's resume include funding the Contras at the behest of the White House, supporting the Afghan rebels against the Soviet Union, and serving as a go-between in the mending of the Libya-U.S. relationship. The CIA worked with Pinochet through his secret police chief, Manuel Contreras, Simpson reports, adding that Contreras banked at Riggs as recently as 1979.

"That wasn't money-laundering, detective, I was just serving national security," would be an excellent defense in a criminal prosecution. Another reason the government might want to shut down the criminal probe that Simpson doesn't mention is that where there are one or two CIA-related bank accounts, there are probably more. Better to cover up the extent of Riggs' "full-service" banking.

In other words, BCCI, meet Riggs Bank; Riggs Bank, meet BCCI.

Kudos to Slate's Jack Shafer for connecting some of the dots, and for bringing the term "parapolitics" out of the fringe and into the virtual mainstream.

However, and as usual, the stories lack context. Both the historical context (the ugly trail of CIA cut-outs and compromised institutions such as Nugan Hand and BCCI), and Riggs' own internal context. As we discussed here last Sept 14, Riggs is facing a class action suit brought by 9/11 families for its part in aiding al Qaeda financiers of the attacks "through negligence."

Also soft-peddled is the very special relationship the bank enjoys with the Bush family, through Uncle Jonathan. Shafer's single, cautious mention is the following, from his second column on Riggs and the CIA:

As long as we're indulging in speculation, what should we make of the 1997 deal in which J. Bush & Co., a money management firm owned by Jonathan Bush, George H.W. Bush's brother and W's uncle, was purchased by a unit of Riggs Bank? Exactly how close is the Bush dynasty to Riggs and its scandal?

Left unsaid is the fact that Bush was appointed CEO of Riggs Bank's investment arm in May of 2000. So I would say, if any of those nicely laundered bucks stop anywhere, they ought to stop on the desk of Bonesman Jonathan.

Back in the days of the Golden Triangle narco-laundering Nugan Hand Bank, the brass of military-intelligence were less cautious than they are today about the company they were seen to keep. As Jonathan Kwinty writes in The Crimes of Patriots, its exective board "had enough generals, admirals and spooks to run a small war." Not that their incaution led to anything worse for them than embarrassment - the disposable Frank Nugan and Michael Hand are another story - but the wolves have gotten better at covering their tracks. Still, the money trails are there to be picked up, for those with the courage to follow them into the dark places most won't see even with their eyes closed.

Speaking of spook banks, it was interesting to read ace-spook banker Buzzy Krongard a few days ago suggest that the world is a better place with Osama bin Laden at large.

If the world’s most wanted terrorist is captured or killed, a power struggle among his Al-Qaeda subordinates may trigger a wave of terror attacks, said AB “Buzzy” Krongard, who stepped down six weeks ago as the CIA’s third most senior executive.

“You can make the argument that we’re better off with him (at large),” Krongard said. “Because if something happens to Bin Laden, you might find a lot of people vying for his position and demonstrating how macho they are by unleashing a stream of terror.”

Krongard, a former investment banker who joined the CIA in 1998, said Bin Laden’s role among Islamic militants was changing. “He’s turning into more of a charismatic leader than a terrorist mastermind,” he said. “Some of his lieutenants are the ones to worry about.” Krongard, 68, said he viewed Bin Laden “not as a chief executive but more like a venture capitalist”.

This should be a shocking admission to those unfamiliar with Krongard's name, and its early linkage to the disappeared topic of 9/11 insider trading. To those who know the story, and the score, it's further confirmation, from one venture capitalist to another, that 9/11 was, in an important respect, a business arrangement.

1392 Comments:

Whenever the mainstream media, especially the Wall Street Journal, is going after a seemingly controversal story I suspect an ulterior motive, which would have nothing to do with informing the public about political crooks and getting them to justice.

The CIA has been in the cross-hairs of some of the Bush-administration for quite a while. By now it has been quietly dismembered for also.

It seems to me that there is a power-struggle going on between different economic elites.

The elite with the upper hand is more attuned to the super-secret NSA which is working from inside the Pentagon and has no congressional oversight at all - and of course they have their Office of Special Plans as well.

They´re trying to get the CIA on their side by transforming it. But this might have a blow-back. Some of the displaced might not go quietly.

So now in order to discredit them some beans are being spilled, not enough of course to really rock the boat. Some countries which are very big in money-laundering are not mentioned at all. And the targeted Saudi-Arabia is on the shoot-down list of the Neo-cons.

Since Bush, the younger, always has been nothing more than a puppet in this administration, Cheney and his minions might not have any scrouples in sacrificing him now, after the elections.

We should remember that Bush, the older, ex-President and ex-CIA-chief, has been publicly against the Iraq adventure. At first I thought that this was no more than a ploy, but now I´m convinced it was his honest opinion, an opinion shared by most of the CIA.

Osama bin Laden, of course, was a creation of the CIA. And the guy impersonating bin Laden a few times until the last elections was an actor paid by them.It was a last minute try to get Kerry elected instead of Bush by showing Bush´s incompetence in this supposed "war against terrorism". And it would have worked, if the elections hadn´t been rigged.Of course the Osama tapes after the election were done by another outfit. Even Jihad Unspun caught unto that, or maybe they got a tip. Some say they have some relationship to the CIA.

So whom should we rooting for?The CIA or the NSA and the Neocons?Or maybe should hope that they will finally destroy each other?But then, the last time those 2 elites had a disagreement it brought us WW II: There was the banking elite around Churchill and Roosevelt against the industrial elite in Germany and the US (Henry Ford and Prescott Bush, for instance), financing Hitler.And the cannon-fodder for their power-plays, was most of the world, soldiers and civillians alike - and the final victims were 50 million dead and untold millions maimed.The stakes might even be higher this time around.

The Krongard statement was rather sick in its dry assessment of the supposed mass murderer bin Laden. His argument doesn't even make much sense anyway, since bin laden is clearly a major threat even if he is a terrorist "venture capitalist". Couldn't bin Laden's venture capitalism pay for the nuclear bomb that the CIA wants to keep warning us of?

Erlenda as usual has interesting things to say, and I wonder if there is any chance Cheney would covertly get Bush impeached resulting in Cheney becoming president and really getting to implement his plans for destruction across the middle east.

Although it lacks the explicit enumeration of spook/bank relationships, I wholeheartedly recommend listening to the audio series "The Wizards of Money," available through this link (mostly: a few programs are missing):

http://www.robinupton.com/people/WizardsOfMoney/

It's an eye-opening tour of how big money really works, and it is not at all a stretch to believe that at least some of this activity is coordinated via the CIA.

I don't think Saudi Arabia is on the "shoot-down" list, exactly. I think that certain factional divisions within the western elites mirror factional divisions within the struggle for Saudi royal succession, which is of course set within the larger context of the struggle for global economic hegemony within the Big Money elites.

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